James OGabhann III

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James O'Gabhann III

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Democratic Party

Elections and appointments
Last election

June 2, 2020

Personal
Birthplace
Tipton, Ind.
Religion
Roman Catholic
Profession
Public School Teacher
Contact

Campaign website

James O'Gabhann III (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Indiana's 9th Congressional District. He lost in the Democratic primary on June 2, 2020.

O'Gabhann completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

James O'Gabhann III was born in Tipton, Indiana. He pursued his undergraduate education at California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA); the University of California, Los Angeles; and Olympic College. He pursued his graduate education at CSULA and Case Western Reserve University. O'Gabhann's career experience includes working as a public school teacher.[1]

Elections

2020

See also: Indiana's 9th Congressional District election, 2020

Indiana's 9th Congressional District election, 2020 (June 2 Republican primary)

Indiana's 9th Congressional District election, 2020 (June 2 Democratic primary)

General election

General election for U.S. House Indiana District 9

Incumbent Trey Hollingsworth defeated Andy Ruff and Tonya Millis in the general election for U.S. House Indiana District 9 on November 3, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Trey Hollingsworth
Trey Hollingsworth (R)
 
60.9
 
218,606
Image of Andy Ruff
Andy Ruff (D) Candidate Connection
 
34.8
 
124,826
Image of Tonya Millis
Tonya Millis (L)
 
4.3
 
15,601

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 359,033
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Indiana District 9

Andy Ruff defeated Mark J. Powell, D. Liam Dorris, Brandon Hood, and James O'Gabhann III in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Indiana District 9 on June 2, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Andy Ruff
Andy Ruff Candidate Connection
 
43.7
 
21,626
Image of Mark J. Powell
Mark J. Powell Candidate Connection
 
19.9
 
9,872
Image of D. Liam Dorris
D. Liam Dorris Candidate Connection
 
15.8
 
7,813
Image of Brandon Hood
Brandon Hood Candidate Connection
 
13.9
 
6,899
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Submit photo
James O'Gabhann III Candidate Connection
 
6.7
 
3,306

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 49,516
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Indiana District 9

Incumbent Trey Hollingsworth advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Indiana District 9 on June 2, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Trey Hollingsworth
Trey Hollingsworth
 
100.0
 
62,962

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 62,962
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Libertarian convention

Libertarian convention for U.S. House Indiana District 9

Tonya Millis advanced from the Libertarian convention for U.S. House Indiana District 9 on March 7, 2020.

Candidate
✔
Image of Tonya Millis
Tonya Millis (L)

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

2019

See also: Los Angeles Unified School District elections (2019)

General runoff election

Special general runoff election for Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education District 5

Jackie Goldberg defeated Heather Repenning in the special general runoff election for Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education District 5 on May 14, 2019.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Jackie Goldberg
Jackie Goldberg (Nonpartisan)
 
71.3
 
20,552
Image of Heather Repenning
Heather Repenning (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
28.7
 
8,253

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 28,805
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

General election

Special general election for Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education District 5

The following candidates ran in the special general election for Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education District 5 on March 5, 2019.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Jackie Goldberg
Jackie Goldberg (Nonpartisan)
 
48.2
 
15,935
✔
Image of Heather Repenning
Heather Repenning (Nonpartisan) Candidate Connection
 
13.1
 
4,341
Image of Graciela Ortiz
Graciela Ortiz (Nonpartisan)
 
13.0
 
4,310
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Submit photo
Cynthia Gonzalez (Nonpartisan)
 
9.8
 
3,230
Image of Allison Greenwood Bajracharya
Allison Greenwood Bajracharya (Nonpartisan)
 
6.0
 
1,986
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Submit photo
Ana Cubas (Nonpartisan)
 
3.5
 
1,145
Image of David Valdez
David Valdez (Nonpartisan)
 
2.0
 
678
Silhouette Placeholder Image.png
Submit photo
Rocío Rivas (Nonpartisan)
 
1.6
 
545
Image of Salvador Sanchez
Salvador Sanchez (Nonpartisan)
 
1.6
 
522
Image of Nestor Enrique Valencia
Nestor Enrique Valencia (Nonpartisan)
 
1.2
 
382

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 33,074
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Campaign themes

2020

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

James O'Gabhann III completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by O'Gabhann's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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I am a Native of Tipton County , Indiana and grew up on a small farm. During the summers, I worked in the corn fields for Pioneer Seed to develop new hybrids of corn . Like the family farm ,it was hard humid work but it gave me an appreciation for the life sciences and sympathy for migrant field workers. Social security was taken out of my pay check at fourteen years old. I complained then but not now. I spent the take home pay on dates, bell bottoms jeans, and for Senior Proms I rented tuxedo with a Nehru collar . Back then I liked style.

If you noticed , I said Proms. I was one of the fortunate sons where I attended TWO Proms and several dances. There was an all girls Catholic high school named St Joseph's Academy in town and I served Mass there during special holy days. And well, I met girls there that boarded there from Mexico ,Central America and other parts of the State . One thing led to another and they asked me to their dances and Proms. I think that was when I first became a feminist where the burden was taken from me to initiate a date.

After graduation from Tipton High School - Go Blue Devils - I went West to California for education,opportunity and the weather. Now I am returning to run for the United States Congress along the Ohio River in the Great NINTH of Indiana in the tradition of former Representative Lee Hamilton.

I come from a tradition of farm and labor and wish to reestablish that tradition in Indiana with a RURAL GREEN NEW DEAL
  • Healthy workers FIRST and then the Economy
  • Lead with FACTS and leave FICTION to great writing and novelists of our time
  • Climate Change is REAL but with WILL it can be addressed in part with a RURAL GREEN NEW DEAL
I am passionate about a single payer health plan for our nation. The COVID 19 Pandemic has shown the inefficiencies in the health care system and how our workers and citizens are being abandoned by an insurance system that serves its own wants and not the needs of the public.

I am a public school teacher and feel the need to serve the needs of ALL of our children, no matter what their special needs that they may bring to the classroom. Resources are required for the classroom to address mental health and special needs at a young age. Let's confront them now and not later where the complexity only grows to solve them.
End private charters of schools as we should end the privatization of the military. Public institutions are accountable while private corporations and contractors are not.
Private and parochial choice for schooling is fine as long as public funds are NOT being used for private ends. Private funds should be used for private schools and parochial schools NOT public taxpayer funds.

I am for a RURAL GREEN NEW DEAL economy where high speed internet service is delivered to our rural schools and neighborhoods.

Good roads and the rural electrification of transportation and building systems through renewable resources would be under the same program

The more I study history ,the more I appreciate who came before us; especially Native American leaders such as Chief Joseph, and African American leaders since all social movements on the North American continent lead back to the abolitionist movement and perhaps before - that found its origins in freedom.

Further, labor leaders are not appreciated as they should be in U.S. history such as Harry Bridges of the Longshoremen, Mother Jones and the Ladies Garments' Workers of the last century and Delores Huerta of the United Farmworkers.
We are only here due to the sacrifices of so many, many that are unheard of and unnamed but their strength is ever felt.

Here is to the unnamed!
Oh my there are so many books. films and essays. Shall we begin with Plato and Aristotle ,and end with Rachel Carson, Fritz Capra, Donella Meadows and Ibram Kendi X

Tom Paine's essay was not too bad also as a pamphlet.

Those books and essays are so thick in thought that I have not given them enough justice in reflection.
CHARACTER and using positional power as a light footprint when carrying out policies that are based on facts and not fiction and showmanship.
I am just a farmer at heart guided by the land, environment and voices of the past and present.
The core responsibilities are to carry out the will of the people when reasonable and to facilitate a discussion when it is not so a consensus may be arrived at.
I was only in Middle School and High School when JFK , Medger Evers, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm were sliced down. Incredible feelings for me - every time a shooting happened.

I felt also that I was going to die young since there were so many deaths on the streets and in Viet Nam. However, I am fortunate I am now running for U.S. House at almost seventy years out , and already an annotation or an end note in political history of my native state and U.S. history. Hopefully, not too far into a footnote.
I still remember my father learning of Bobby Kennedy's death in the morning news and before work. As he was tying his shoes he paused looked up at the TV screen, shook his head and finished tying those work shoes,, - did not say a word as he went off to work.

And even before then when Bobby made that incredible speech to mostly African Americans in Indianapolis and told a tense crowd that just learned of Martin's death - that he too knew loss. Only a few years later Bobby would also be gone.
My first job was in the hot humid corn fields of Indiana pollinating corn in hopes of new hybrids in the future. Other times I was de-tasseling corn. Pioneer Seed Company had a research station in Tipton County and when I was not busy on the family farm I was there appreciating the life sciences and corn plants.

The work also gave me an appreciation of migrant field labor work when Latinx workers were bending over picking tomatoes in the fields in other parts of the County. Now as a teacher, I often times think of their children trying to gain an education going from one area to another following the growing season.
Only one example of the challenges of rural education among many when it comes to supporting all students and their dreams through academic achievement.
During the summer in high school I worked the fields and the Fall I rode the bus with children of Latinx parents, and then after the Fall they were gone - on to other fields and other regions of the country.

At Pioneer Seed, I had my first social security deductions withdrawn at fourteen years old. I protested then but not now. It now seems like a good financial savings plan.

From the net pay, I would purchase Nehru jackets and bell bottoms so I could be fashionable and look my best.

Again there are so many books. I respect everyone's religious point of view and as a literary document the King James Version of the Bible - everyone may agree - is a pretty good piece of writing.
Of course. Shakespeare and his inventive use of language is prominent with me.
Any character that is invisible and a fly on the wall so I could listen in on conversations on what people really think about me and pressing issues of the day without my , presence in the room.
Little Richard just passed so his lyrics on Long Tall Sally currently is stuck in my mind..........."I sawUncle John with bald headed Sally. He saw Aunt Mary coming his way. He ran to the alley."
In this election we cannot run to the alley but face Aunt Mary straight up.
I was a philosophy major. There is no room for philosophy in today's world in this short attention span commerce driven society. That has been a struggle for me to navigate in a world of technology and the value on turn around times and speed.
Another challenge ,I just have too many interests in a specialized world.
The House should reflect a house of the commons while the Senate reflects more a house of lords where the latter lords over us as a king over his subjects.

The House exercises the national and international conversations and must be attuned to local needs and concerns. The structure functions somewhat as a paradox in terms of goals - local vs. national vs. international.

If we are not attuned to the global then we lose our rural economy and our health. Should we not be attuned to the national and local then we lose our national character and history of defending our individual rights and autonomy. A pursuit of social happiness calls for both - not in indulgence but through altruism.
No but rather it is necessary for the House to be represented by: farmers, entrepreneurs ,artists, scientists, religious men and women that believe in conversations of a separation and state, engineers, labor leaders, front line professionals such as nurses and food service workers and farm and migrant workers - so much more diversity.

Experience brings knowledge to the policy table!
When Justice Thurgood Marshall,the first African American served on the Supreme Court ,some of his fellow justices mentioned he not only brought his wealth of legal expertise but his experiences that they would otherwise not be aware of or privy to.
We need more women on the Supreme Court and governance ,not because they will necessarily bring forth a better world but women scan and pay attention to issues under a different light than others.

At one time office holders were known as public servants and not the elites with better health care and benefits than the rest of us. The House and Senate have become the most exclusive clubs in the world and not to the benefit of us, the people. They are no longer the servants but the masters that create social structures that benefit their own social class while indenturing the rest of us .
CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGE and CLIMATE CHANGE are the top three priorities that are facing these United States of America in the next decade!!!

On an immediate level we must build resiliency within our social system so that we address COVID19 and the pandemic.
Following this rural ,national and global challenge, we must be prepared to cast our lot toward further natural disasters in the future within the rubric of climate change.

Mother Earth renews itself up to a point but also exercises wrath on those that do not listen to life entrails. Let us address these problems with a GREEN RURAL NEW DEAL and carbon neutral enterprises embedded in a social yoke of resiliency.
As soon as I am elected, in November, I would travel to Speaker of the House Pelosi in Washington or San Francisco and let her know that Rural America and Indiana needs to be represented in the House on the most powerful committees under her rule , especially so in the Era of COVID19.

Those committees would be the House Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees , and Chairing those Sub -Committees that have the most leverage on behalf of the people of Rural America so that we may address the social and economic needs in a Rural Green New Deal.
(No more of do nothingness as reflected in the behavior of the current incumbent in the NINTH. He is only a speaker for Mr. Trump and the far right wing.)

Now some of the sophisticated readers of Ballotpedia may say, "Please ,Mr. O'Gabhann you are only a freshman in a House of 435 ambitious actors. How would you manage such a feat of attaining a position on a power laden committee?"
Believe me when I win this red seat , it will be one of the largest ,if not the largest upsets in the 2000 House Elections,Speaker Pelosi will take notice with my Rural Green and my past experience in both Indiana and California.

Rural America has been ignored for too long and only through rebuilding a farm/labor alliance will we be listened to again as we were when the Democratic Party had in the past that farm/labor weave running through its policies.



Two years is fine for a term of office, and in that way the Representative is always aware of her/his constituents and why they are there - and that is to represent the needs of the people.
I do not believe in term limits. Let the people decide on a Representative by ending the term of office. Why take that right away from the voter?
I would rather serve at the behest of the Speaker on Special Committees such as Immigration or Native Americans when called upon and the various caucuses in the House such as the establishment of a Progressive Rural Caucus.

Formal leadership positions do not interest me and at times can be like group think. I am a public school teacher and a critical thinker and would rather surface the prevailing assumptions on issues and offer those to the Speaker at that level.

I think those positions have whip in their title such as Majority Whip. I was never comfortable with whips or holding one.
I wish we could reestablish the presence of former Representative Lee Hamilton in the Great NINTH in southern Indiana. He had both an international and local focus to his policies. Unfortunately, now the ones that have served the NINTH in the past or present are only interested in moving away and/or moving up toward another higher office. We have someone now that is not even a native of the State. This hurts the NINTH in continuity and establishing seniority in the House especially if one is in the minority party as the current incumbent serves in a far right position and stance.
Oh, personal stories of chemical polluted private wells that are now being ignored by the EPA, the drug, drinking and vaping epidemic in the NINTH, workers not being compensated fairly and the mental health needs including the increase of farmer suicides move me to no end.
And finally the presumed priority of economics over health care disturbs me.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on May 17, 2020


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